Sincerity
by Rey Bee
Summary: While thinking about his parents he doesn't know, Naruto meets Sasuke on the playground. With Naruto a little less noisy and Sasuke slightly more open than usually, a small talk emerges. One-shot! Not-yaoi. A little bit of humor at the end.


Summary: While thinking about his parents he doesn't know, Naruto meets Sasuke on the playground. With Naruto a little less noisy and Sasuke slightly more open than usually, a small talk emerges. One-shot! Not-yaoi.

 **A/N: You know, it's somehow impossible that Naruto didn't really look for information about his parents or that Sasuke was as antisocial as it seemed. So I decided to give it a try;) hope you like it.**

Only him, with starry sky above his head and a sound of a creaking swing he was sitting on. There was no one apart from him in the playground area. It was simply too late. What time? Around midnight, probably. He didn't have a watch, nor did he really care enough to check on a wall clock before he got out from his place. It's not that anyone would be bothered by his absence. He was living alone… after all.

And again, not that he wasn't used to it. To be honest, he preferred it to be this way. He remembered how it felt to live in the orphanage back then, when he was still a little kid. As much as he liked being around people, having an apartment on his own was something he appreciated. It was good to have a place where you can come back from missions, where you can sleep almost safely. Yeah, it was nice.

But there was a piercing question in his head. A question which wasn't giving him a rest, even if he pretended otherwise. Because… well. If he had a HOME, not a HOUSE, then there should have been something to keep him there despite everything. Why was his apartment a home and not simply a house?

If you asked a random person, you would probably get as an answer something like "your home is where you belong", which would literally mean "your home is where your family is".

Well. He had no family.

So okay, fine, let's not be too hasty to say it. Of course he had some FRIENDS. He had Old Man Hokage, for example. And since he became a genin, Kakashi-sensei, Sakura-chan and Sasuke-teme were always around. Not to mention that he could always count for Iruka-sensei. Yeah, he was so lucky to have all of them.

But it wasn't about that. Sure he was happy to have them in his life, but it just wasn't THAT.

He missed his parents.

As far as he knew, they died during the Kyuubi attack right after he was born. And the very beast was sealed inside of him. Not once or twice in his life did he wonder if the Nine Tales would know something about his parents, but... really. He didn't know the way to contact him just yet. Nor was he sure if he wanted to, to be honest. It sounded quite crazy even for him.

He remembered the long nights when he couldn't sleep and was thinking about THEM. When he was a little kid, he thought that maybe somehow he just didn't have parents. But with time he understood that EVERYBODY has parents, no exceptions. So he started to imagine things. He thought about his mother. She certainly was very beautiful and kind. She would be a great cook, just like Chouji's or Shikamaru's mother. She would smile at him and hug him often, if she was there… And his father would be an awesome shinobi who knows countless jutsu which he would pass down to him, his son. They would spend their free time together, babbling and laughing, eating ramen at Ichiraku's and… and…

It would be so great to have parents.

"Dobe?"

He raised his head and looked straight into onyx eyes of a newcomer, who was now observing him attentively. An uncomfortable silence was getting too long to bare, when none of them moved or said anything for the next seconds.

"Sasuke" Naruto mutteded finaly.

"What are you doing out at this hour?" the Uchiha frowned a little while eyeing his blond teammate.

"I… could ask you the same thing, you know."

"Training."

"Yeah, I didn't have to." It was quite obvious after all…

"So?"

"Just couldn't sleep."

To his surprise, Naruto registered Sasuke moving to the second swing and taking a seat on it. A silence, this time more comfortable, fell for couple of minutes when they were both looking at the Hokage Monument just in front of them. It was visible even in the weak moonlight like this…

"What are you thinking about?"

Naruto eyed his friend warily, but everything he saw was a calm expression on his face.

"Why d'you care?"

"You're unusually quiet for your standards" he shrugged dismissively.

"Well, for YOUR standards, you're way too talkative right now, you know?"

"Answer me."

"Why? Cause you're curious?" he smirked. "Uchiha Sasuke can't help-"

"Fine, don't tell me" Sasuke snarled and looked again in the Monument's direction.

But he didn't go away.

"Hey… Sasuke?" Naruto took a careful look at his friend after couple of minutes.

"What?"

"You know.." he couldn't find the right words for a while. "I mean… can I ask you something?"

"You may try."

"Yeah… but… it's about…" he struggled to form a sentence. He didn't know how Sasuke would react.

"…about…?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

"Well fine, I was thinking… how is it to have… parents?"

Sasuke blinked twice. His lips parted for a short moment, but he closed them almost instantly. Then he narrowed his eyes at Naruto searchingly.

"You're thinking about your parents?" he asked softly.

"I guess… yeah, I am" he admitted slowly. He swung a little to escape Sasuke's glare just a little.

"It depends" he heard his deep voice.

"Huh?"

"How it is to have them. It depends on parents themselves."

"What d'you mean?"

"Nothing much" he snorted quietly. "Parents are humans. Humans are different. So there is no general opinion how it is to have them" he wondered for a moment. "Though I thing in most cases it's better to have them than not to" he finished, swinging quite violently.

"I guess it is" Naruto mumbled under his breath.

"Who were they?"

"What?"

"Your parents" Sasuke stopped the swing and looked at him. "Who were they?"

"I have… no idea" he said slowly.

"How so?"

"I never met them" Naruto shrugged sullenly. "All I know is that they probably died during the Kyuubi attack."

"Can't you just ask the Hokage? I thought he talks to you sometimes."

"He does, the thing is… I tried. And he didn't seem pleased. He didn't really say much about it either."

"But you don't live in the orphanage."

"I don't now. But I used to when I was little. But they didn't really like me there, so I somehow… moved to my current place. I don't remember all of this too well."

"Strange" Sasuke commented with a little sigh.

Some group of drunk men passed by the entrance to the playground. They were making a lot of noise while singing some old song, too unclearly to understand the words.

"My parents were still alive when I turned eight" Sasuke spoke suddenly. "So I remember them quite well."

"How were they?"

"My mother was the nicest person I ever knew" he said softly. "She smiled very often and was gentle, but not submissive. It was great to be around her. She was off duty after my birth, but she gained a jounin rank before I was born. There was a time she even joined ANBU, but she left before she got married. Because of this, she was very well-trained. She taught me a lot about the shuriken jutsu."

"Wow, that's awesome!" Naruto grinned. "No wonder you was this good at it back in the Academy. I always wanted to beat you at this, you know."

"Like you ever could, loser" Sasuke snorted quietly.

"I'm gonna beat you one day, just you wait!"

"As if."

"I will" he muttered stubbornly. Sasuke only raised his eyebrows. "What about your father?"

"He was the clan leader" he shrugged. "I didn't interact much with him. He had… more important things to dill with."

"Oh."

Sasuke's tone revealed just how much he didn't feel comfortable with that subject, so Naruto decided not to push it further. After all, it was already uncommon that his teammate was talking to him at all, not to mention that he answered some questions concerning his family.

"I mean…" to Naruto's surprise, the boy continued. "It's not like he hated me. He just… didn't really pay attention to me. I believe he cared" he bit his lip for a moment. "I do."

"You miss them, right?" Naruto asked after a while.

"What's that question about…?"

"I mean… come to think of it, it's exactly because you remember them, that thinking about them hurts. Cause there is a lot of things that you would like to tell them or to show them, or that you would like them to see. You probably think sometimes if they would be happy about who you are now or about how you live. They'd probably want you to be happier, too. Well, I would like my parents to get to know me too and if they were good people, then I'm sure they would want me to be happy too… but still, thinking about them doesn't hurts me. I miss them in some other way. It doesn't tear my heart through, I'm more like curious-"

"Are you done?" Sasuke sighed and sent him a heavy look.

"Sorry… I forgot you're still a reserved bastard, even if you open up a little.

"Hn."

"And…" the blonde started the conversation again. "Are there some… perks?"

"…what."

"Well, of not having your parents around."

"You're an idiot" Sasuke shook his head in disbelief.

"It's good to look for some positive things in bad situations like this, you know-"

"There are NO perks of not having my family around, you dumbass."

"Sorry."

He didn't make a move, when Sasuke stood up and prepared himself to leave the playground. He shouldn't have said that… It was stupid. It only made Sasuke more depressed than he already was. And it made him think again about that revenge of his. Well, crap. It happened, it's not that he could reverse time or anything. He would deal with it tomorrow, when they'd meet for a Team Seven's training.

"You going?"

"Huh?" Naruto looked at him surprised.

"Are you going to stay here for night or maybe you'll go back home?"

"Why d'you care…?"

Sasuke was visibly dealing with an internal battle of unknown sort at that moment. He eyed his friend hesitantly for ten long seconds before he opened his mouth.

"I want ice-cream."

"You WHAT?"

"Ice-cream. A milky liquid frozen in some shape with a little stick to hold it-"

"I know, what ice-cream is, teme!" Naruto grunted irritated.

"Why do you ask then?" Uchiha shot back with a smirk.

"You bastard" he pouted, but stood up anyway. "Why do you want ice-cream? You don't like sweets."

"Who said I don't like sweets?"

"Sakura-chan."

"I don't mind ice-cream" he shrugged nonchalantly.

"So you do like sweets?"

"…"

"You DO?"

"Why does that matter…?!"

"Because everybody thinks you don't!"

"Whatever, dobe."

"Can I tell Sakura-chan?"

"No."

"You're no fun, Sasuke…"

They found the only opened shop in Konoha and chose what they wanted. When a need of rivalry made its way to both boy's heads, they raced each other to the Hokage monument. Then they opened their ice-creams at the top of Yondaime's head and looked east to see the sun slowly raising from the horizon line.

"But seriously, teme. You do like ice-cream?" Naruto eyed his best friend with a suspicious grin.

"Idiot."

"Very informative, you know…"

"Hn."

"Whatever."

"HN."

"FINE, I won't ask anymore!" he almost yelled.

"…I don't" Sasuke admitted reluctantly.

"I knew it!" Naruto exclaimed triumphantly. But his grin faded immediately. "So why did you want to eat it?"

"That's not your business."

"…that's the last time in my life I'm hanging out with you at night."

"Hn."

 **A/N: Uchiha Mikoto liked ice-creams;) please review!**


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